Acquainted with Him
Hosea 6:3 AMP So let us know and become personally acquainted with Him; let us press on to know and understand fully the [greatness of the] LORD [to honor, heed, and deeply cherish Him]. His appearing is prepared and is as certain as the dawn, And He will come to us [in salvation] like the [heavy] rain, Like the spring rain watering the earth.”
Philippians 3:10 Amp[For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him [that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly], and that I may in that same way come to know the power outflowing from His resurrection [[a]which it exerts over believers], and that I may so share His sufferings as to be continually transformed [in spirit into His likeness even] to His death, [in the hope]
My heart for you with this post is that you will daily become more acquianted with Abba Father, Jesus Christ His Son and Holy Spirit.
21 Years ago when my first child was born I realised that I needed more in my relationship with God. I have been a child of God since very early in my life and I have always loved Him; but I did not know how to pray effectively and I didn’t know where to begin to get to know Him better. I felt like, “there must be more than this”. In that time God allowed us to stay in a place where we were far away from friends and family because He had to teach me how to seek and find Him. It wasn’t easy, but He taught me to really rely on Him and seek Him for answers. The more I spent time in His word getting to know Him, the easier it became and soon enough I could distinguish between when He was speaking and when the enemy was speaking. The word says in John 10:27 “The sheep that are My own hear My voice and listen to Me; I know them, and they follow Me.”
I would like to share with you how I approached this issue of becoming more acquianted with Him. It is very basic, but a good building block to start with. As you grow spiritually it will start to look different. There are many facets to God that we could learn about. Maybe this can help you a bit.
I started out with who Jesus is; what is His character like? I asked myself, how do we get to know someone? When I met my husband and we were dating, we would spend hours just talking and asking each other questions about what we like and what we dislike. Now our relationship is much deeper and there are other facets of him that I come to know as we grow deeper in our relationship. At first it was only the two of us. Then I had to get to know him in what he was like as a dad when our children were born. As we grow older and our grandchildren arrive I will then see another facet of him. I will only be able to see it when our grandchildren are here, no sooner. It is the same in our relationship with Christ. When I face trials – who is He, what is He like? When I need comfort – who is He and how will He take me through? When I need protection – who is He and how will He protect me? The list goes on and on. There are so many facets of Him. Provider, healer, redeemer, shepherd, protector etc.
This was my approach: I started out with that which was in my face. I had my first child and I knew I had to start praying for this little one’s life. Especially for protection because I knew God would be much better at protecting her than me. I had to get to know everything about Jesus. I didn’t start with only one aspect of Christ and then moved on to the next, I wanted everything, all at once. I started out in the New Testament – there is a lot of information on how Jesus behaved; how He interacted with people; how He showed love and many more. I would maybe read a chapter or 2 at a time, sometimes I had to stop at 2 verses to really chew on what I had read. There were many places where my belief system was challenged, where I was so deceived because I either didn’t know or I believed the opposite of what I read. As I grew spiritually and came to know a bit more about Jesus’s character, my faith started changing. Most of the time I could stand against things that were in contradiction to what I read about Him. I could mostly stand against the enemies lies because I chose to believe what His word was saying. Every thought that was coming against me, that were tormenting me – I could refute with His word. Many times I had to push against myself because things did not look good. It was so easy to respond to what was infront of me instead of what God says in His word. Most of the time I was my own worst enemy. I had to really slap myself with the word and choose to believe what God says. I remember one time, our daughter was about one and a half: we didn’t have medical aid and financially we barely got through in a month. She caught the flue and had a fever and she looked bad. I felt very sorry for her, but then I got mad at the devil making her sick. I said, “I do not look at what I see because it is a lie. I look at how it looks in heaven – and in heaven there is no sickness. So, in the name of Jesus Christ who is the healer, you are healed!” I had to do it a few times because I had to push against myself and not look at how bad it looked; and really trusted God to come in. He did! There was a season where many things happened to my babies where there were no medical aid or finances. I was pushed to rise up in who I believed Christ is and my faith grew like a wild fire. I honor Abba Father for His love and for teaching me so well. I must say, if you really want Him and really go after him with everything in you, you will find Him. The question is: do you really want Him? Do you want to know everything about Him?
Then there is another way to approach this: When I have questions on a certain topic and what is written in the word about this topic I would go search on the internet, for example: Type in “Jesus the way scriptures”. It will throw out a bunch of scriptures that you can start studying and ponder on. I would also take the verse that I want to study and type in, “John14:6 commentaries”. Commentaries are the work of biblical scholars who have dedicated their lives to understanding the word. In the commentaries it gives you a wider idea of what the scripture is actually saying. Sometimes it gives you some history or context. There are many different bible commentaries, so I read through as many as you can to see how they compare – do they say the same thing? This is where you will learn how to interpret the scriptures right and not draw your own conclusion. Remember that the bible is our only source of truth and not the internet – the internet is just a tool and there is a lot of deception out there.
It is imperative for us as Christians to become more acquainted with God. We need to know who He is, so that when the day of temptation and pressure comes, we will be able to stand because we know who He is and we know He has got our backs.
May you dig deeper into knowing Him and come to a place of deeply cherishing Him. May God in all His facets be revealed to you. It is neccesary for you to go after Him. If you don’t make the effort you won’t get to know Him. Oh, He is so worth knowing!!!
Lets pray: Abba father, I want to know You more because to know You is to know truth. Please forgive me for running away from You because it seems like too much effort. I undertsand that to build a relationship takes time and effort. Forgive me for not using my time to seek You, but to satisfy my flesh. Holy Spirit you are my helper; I give you permission to guide my steps and truly break open to me that which I need to learn and see in every season of my life. Set me free from the bondages over my mind: the things I believe as truth that are lies. Please help me to find You Lord. Help me to get to know everything about You. I open my heart to You so that You can teach me who You really are. I ask this in Jesus name. Amen.